I took the dog for a two hour walk along the North County Trailway the other day. According to Traillink:

The North County Trailway is the longest of the four connected rail-trails breathing new life into the former New York Central Railroad’s Putnam Division line. The “Old Put” provided passenger and freight service between New York City and Brewster, in Putnam County, from the 1880s. Passenger service ended in 1958 and freight services ended in 1980.

The trail spans 22.1 miles in Westchester County. From Mount Pleasant (where it becomes the South County Trailway on its southward trek to the New York City line) the trailway extends north to the Putnam County border, where it seamlessly transitions into the Putnam Trailway, rolling 9.7 miles north. From Old Saw Mill River Road at the North County Trailway’s southern end, the trail runs parallel to the busy Saw Mill River Parkway on the right and woodlands and a power transmission corridor on the left.

We started at the end of the trailway on Route 118 in Baldwin Place and then walked south. At first there were a few houses and some wetlands bordering on the trail, but these gradually disappeared leaving just a trail passing through the woods. It’s paved (see below) and if you’re walking you have to be on the alert for bicycles, which don’t often announce their presence.

It was an easy walk, if a little boring: a flat surface descending slightly. Every so often you’d come across something worth seeing such as the farm above, but such sights seemed to be few and far between.